Australia Cannot Do It

The Postmaster-General (Mr. Poyn- ton) is hopeful of being able to obtain the manufacture of Telephone material in Australia.

Brothers!

Back in the early youth of our
fathers and our mothers—
Even in the day
When our grand-dads
Were little lads,
Playing beneath Australia's kindly
sun,
This blight, this cult, this slogan of
the "cannot be done"
Was rampant in the land.
On every hand
They heard it. In those days,
When folk fared back and forth in
bullock drays,
Down to the era of the speeding
motor
The shorn skirter and the bobbed
hair,
And the ticketed voter,
Has that mad cry rose forth,
South, east, and west; aye, even to
the empty north:
"AUSTRALIA CANNOT DO IT!"

Brothers, believe me, some day we
shall rue it.
Let us, "they" said, "be ever
Drawers of water, for we are not
clever."
Let us be hewers of wood;
For to do, we are no good
At building, making, fashioning, devising.
My friends, is not this modesty sur-
prizing?
For low
we are not slow
We do not lag behind in such things
say, as sport?
But, for all else—Import! Import!
Import!
My brothers, I
For one, abhor that cry.
Even a simple telephone
We cannot fashion by ourselves
alone!
We can talk through it at odd
times, talk at it, swear at it,
Damn it, curse it, break it—
But, friends, we cannot make it.
I ask you, why?
Indeed.
Let us take heed:
Let us take up a newer, manlier
slogan
That shall resound from Ballarat to
Bogun.
From Broome to Bathurst, Bourke
and Bungaree,
Let's tell the world that we,
Shedding all doubts,
No longer are the earth's poor rouse-abouts
There's something of the Anzac in
us still:
Australia CAN DO IT—and she will!